RJ Corman - McGladrey

Case Study:
R.J. Corman
“Like most companies,
I presume, we were
apprehensive about a
complete change to our
core business systems. After
several discussions with
McGladrey consultants and
management, our team
felt assured they would
successfully guide us through
the process of implementing
Dynamics AX.”
Noel Rush,
Vice President Finance
and Administration
ERP selection streamlines finance and
accounting for diverse organization
Overview
Project
R.J. Corman Railroad Group, LLC is a privately
McGladrey was selected for this project because
owned corporation that owns a variety of
of its reputation in the ERP market and the
businesses under multiple corporate entities.
breadth and depth of ERP services to many of the
These businesses are predominately related to
larger business solutions. The McGladrey team
the rail industry, but include presences in other
invested the time to understand the business and
sectors as well. In the rail industry, R.J. Corman
its unique needs and created demonstrations that
owns and operates 11 short-line railroads based
resonated with R.J. Corman. The company valued
in seven states (Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
McGladrey’s insight into the next version of Sage
Tennessee, Mississippi, Texas and West Virginia). In
as well as other products in the ERP market such
addition to operating these rail lines, R.J. Corman
as Microsoft Dynamics AX.
offers a variety of related services to the industry,
including:
After evaluating many alternatives, R.J. Corman
selected Dynamics AX as its new ERP system
• Construction and maintenance
because of its configurability and resulting
• Derailment services and natural disaster
flexibility. One alternative considered was the
cleanup across the United States
next-generation Sage X3 product, but it did not
• Distribution centers and switching operations
provide the multicompany functionality required
• Railroad material sales and delivery
by the business. Dynamics AX provides this
operations
functionality, which is a necessity for a business
• Locomotive engineering and sales (Railpower)
with multiple entities. The ability to handle
• Signaling design, build and installation
these companies and leverage the extensive
R. J. Corman also operates the My Old Kentucky
Dinner Train and the Lexington Dinner Train
which includes weekly lunch and dinner
intercompany accounting features provided by
Dynamics AX made it a natural fit to manage their
23 separate businesses.
excursions, a monthly murder mystery train
In its legacy system, R.J. Corman manually entered
and special holiday trains. Additionally, as a
sales and purchase orders to create receivables
certified FAA repair station, R.J. Corman provides
and payables. For intercompany transactions,
aviation services, including aircraft and helicopter
manual checks were physically cut from one
maintenance.
company and literally walked across the office to
Background
R.J. Corman’s family of businesses were
predominately supported by Sage-related
technology products. Its version of the Sage
solution was written in FoxPro, which is no longer
supported by Microsoft on any platform as of 2013.
Because of this and an overall desire to modernize
its systems, the company required an extensive
review of the different enterprise resource planning
(ERP) solutions that might fit its businesses.
the accounts receivable department of the other
company to pay accounts payable invoices.
Dynamics AX intercompany functionality
provides the capability of paying accounts
payable invoices in one company directly from
another company without having to physically
cut a check. The appropriate bank and vendor
transactions can be created in each of the
companies. Intercompany banking can be used to
move money between bank accounts rather than
writing checks from one company and creating
deposits in another.
The implementation model is designed to
minimize enhancements with the exception
of the required integrations. Dynamics AX is a
highly-configurable system, allowing parameters
to be selected and codes and tables to be created
using R.J. Corman’s specific business terminology.
This will ease the transition from their current
Sage system into Dynamics AX.
Outcomes
Following the discontinuation of service of its
Sage ERP system, R.J. Corman required a new
platform, and desired additional functionality
across its portfolio of businesses. The McGladrey
team understood the company’s challenges and
goals and helped choose an optimal ERP solution
with implementation that has not disrupted day-
McGladrey configured multiple integration
to-day operations. Dynamics AX has the flexibility
points to send and receive data to and from
to accommodate the company’s necessary
their existing operational systems. The open
transactions and increase efficiency out-of-the-
architecture of Dynamics AX enables core
box with user-friendly tools to easily analyze data.
business logic to be leveraged by Microsoft C#
Other implementation benefits include:
or other external programs. This minimizes the
need for external code to be written to execute
Dynamics AX business logic.
The R.J. Corman Derailment Services Company
• Multicompany functionality
• Increased configurability and flexibility, a
must for a business with multiple entities
• Streamlined accounts payable and receivable
relies heavily on an operational system that
functions through intercompany banking
logs each service call, and triggers alerts to
• Increased and fully customizable workflow
various divisions within the company. McGladrey
determined that Dynamics AX’s project
accounting can be leveraged to manage the jobs
(i.e. job costing) created from this system after
they are pushed through another integration.
capabilities
• Integration of company language, codes and
tables to ease transition and adoption
• Support for different business units with
significantly different processes with a single
ERP solution capable of configuration specific
Dynamics AX provides enhanced workflow
to the unique needs of each type of operation
capabilities, specifically accounts payable invoice
and project accounting budgeting workflows.
R.J. Corman can leverage the Windows Workflow
Foundation as well as an intuitive interface where
it can build its own logic. Dynamics AX comes
with nearly 50 out of the box workflows and
additional workflow can be created that is specific
to the company.
The organizational business model requires
production and master planning for a subset
of its companies. Dynamics AX provides this
functionality while still incorporating a single
accounting system of record in true ERP fashion
with all other modules.
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